BBC ON THIS DAY | 16 | 1993: Secret Service goes public 1993: Secret Service goes public Britain's internal security service, MI5, has held the first photocall in its 84-year history. Stella Rimington, 56, became the first Director General of the MI5 to pose openly for cameras at the launch of a brochure outlining the organisation's activities She was made the first female head of MI5 last year - following another unprecedented public announcement - after 22 years in the service. Journalists were invited to their first official briefing by a senior MI5 official where they were warned that this was not the beginning of "a great avalanche of openness". The new booklet reveals nearly half of MI5's work concerns domestic terrorism, particularly the IRA. Only 5% of its activities involve subversion and the remaining workload is shared between threats generated abroad and counter espionage. I think it's right that the public should be consulted about this agency Home Secretary Michael Howard Being in public life is not sufficient justification for investigation. Very few operational details appear in the 36-page brochure, although the methodologies are listed as eavesdropping, surveillance, telephone-tapping and agents.

There is also an address for public correspondence about matters of national security. The security service was only given legal recognition four years ago in the 1989 Security Service Act. Home Secretary Michael Howard, who was at today's launch, said: "I think it's right that the public should be consulted about this agency, this service which does so much to help protect us." Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair has called for an independent parliamentary committee to oversee the work MI5 does in the public interest. The Secret Service Bureau was founded in 1909 by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in response to the expansion of the German Navy. By 1939 it had 30 officers and today numbers about 2,000, with an equal number of men and women, 50% of whom are aged below 40, often recruited straight from university. Ways with Words: 'I would rather have been a Bond girl', says Dame Stella Rimington - Telegraph Ways with Words: 'I would rather have been a Bond girl', says Dame Stella Rimington She was famously the inspiration for Dame Judi Dench’s no-nonsense M in the James Bond films.

Maud Adams in Octopussy Photo: REX FEATURES Dame Stella was adamant about her choice of favourite Bond girl Photo: REUTERS By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor 6:45AM BST 11 Jul 2011 Yet Dame Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, has confessed that she would rather have been a Bond girl. Asked by the audience at a literary festival which Bond villain she would like to be, Dame Stella admitted: “I would rather not be a villain - I would rather be Octopussy.” Octopussy was the exotic beauty played by Swedish model and actress Maud Adams in the 1983 film of the same name. The character, a jewel smuggler, lived in an Indian palace with a harem of female assassins and a pet octopus for company, and was seduced by Roger Moore’s 007. The film is not regarded as one of the finest in the franchise but Dame Stella was adamant about her choice and selected Adams over more famous Bond girls, including Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore or Ursula Andress’s bikini-clad Honey Rider.

Dame Stella’s desire to play a glamorous femme fatale could be a reaction to the negative comments that greeted her appointment as the head of MI5 in 1992. She was the first director-general to be named publicly and was immediately dubbed the “housewife superspy”. Related Articles James Naughtie on 'pimply kids’ of politics 11 Jul 2011 The press attention led to comments about her less-than-glamorous appearance. When photographs of her appeared in the newspapers “it was always of me unloading my shopping on a Saturday morning, wearing a Barbour and jeans”, Dame Stella told the audience at the Telegraph Ways With Words Festival in Dartington, Devon. “‘Why do British women in public life look so much worse than the French?’ was a headline I remember.” Dame Stella, 76, retired from the service in 1996 and is now a novelist, using her knowledge of the secret services to write spy thrillers starring a feisty heroine, Liz Carlyle. “I wanted to try to rescue spy stories from the idea of one man up against a baddie,” she explained.

“James Bond goes to see M and she shows him a very thin file with a photograph on the front and says, ‘Off you go and kill that man’. In fact, it’s not like that at all.” However outlandish the plots, Dame Stella has said in the past that M does bear an uncanny resemblance to her and that Dame Judi’s depiction was “really very good. Both my daughters said so. One even noted that she holds her hands the way I do.” One Dartington audience member asked Dame Stella for her opinion of security services in other countries. She replied: “The Italians were all ex-admirals and terribly courteous - lots of hand-kissing and bowing. The French were extremely good and seemed able to do anything. We worried about laws, they seemed able to do exactly what they liked so we rather envied them.” The former spymaster said that Spooks, the BBC One series about a group of intelligence agents, remains one of her greatest bugbears. “I know everybody loves it, but it’s nothing like the real thing,” she said. “I’ve stopped watching it because it annoyed me so much.

I gather it’s coming back for another series - much to my horror.” For Former MI5 Head, Real Life Inspires Spy Novels : NPR For Former MI5 Head, Real Life Inspires Spy Novels Embed Embed For Former MI5 Head, Real Life Inspires Spy Novels For Former MI5 Head, Real Life Inspires Spy Novels Embed Embed Stella Rimington was the first woman appointed director general of MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service. Jamie Hughs hide caption toggle caption Read an excerpt from Illegal Action. For Stella Rimington, the author of Illegal Action, secret intelligence is second nature; for nearly 30 years, she worked for MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence agency, rising through the ranks to become the first woman appointed director general. Now retired from spy work, Rimington has created Liz Carlyle, a fictional intelligence officer in her mid 30s who works for MI5. Liz is a cool customer, who brings a combination of analytical intelligence and female intuition to a profession dominated by men. If this sounds familiar, it's because, as the author admits, some of her fiction is inspired by reality. "When I first joined MI5, it was a male-dominated world," says Rimington.

"I take some pleasure, I must say, in putting things in Liz's mouth that I might quite have liked to have said — but probably never did — when I was in her position." Rimington says that when she joined MI5, women were "only regarded as suitable to do the paperwork." "We had to fight quite hard to be let into the shop. And then gradually the world changed," she remembers. "I was always determined that I wanted to do the next job up, and that was how I dealt with it." Article continues after sponsorship Illegal Action is Rimington's third book featuring Liz Carlyle. The story revolves around a scheme by the Russian government to silence a wealthy oligarch living in London. It's a plot that could have been ripped from the headlines; when Rimington was working on the book, Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer and dissident living in London, was murdered after someone poisoned his tea — a crime that Litvinenko suspected his former KGB colleagues of committing. "I felt that fact had caught up with ficiton when that happened," Rimington says of Litvinenko's poisoning.

The collision of fact and fiction is something that Rimington is well aware of — especially when it comes to Great Britian's Official Secrets Act. "I still have to submit my fiction for clearance by my former colleagues to make sure that I haven't inadvertently revealed something damaging," she says, adding that she avoids problems by focusing her books on the interplay of people rather than the technical details of the spy business. A notable aspect of Britain's intelligence efforts that Rimington does reveal in her novel is the close cooperation between local police and the intelligence agencies — something that doesn't aways happen in the U.S. "It is an accurate representation of how things go on in the U.K.," says Rimington. "Both our foreign intelligence service, MI6, and MI5 — which is the domestic service — and the police all work extremely closely together. And now they have a sort of joint unit working together so that the intelligence can be shared, and action on the street can be taken." Excerpt: 'Illegal Action' July 15, 20081:37 PM ET Stella Rimington November For once Alvin Jackson had made the wrong choice. Usually he had an unerring eye for a soft target.

It wasn't about size-once a man built like a nightclub bouncer had cried when Jackson showed him the knife. No, it was something less tangible, a kind of passivity that Jackson could sniff out, the way a sniffer dog smells contraband. Not that he expected much resistance from anyone in this part of London. He stood against the iron railings in one of the squares that run off the side streets below Kensington High Street. The night was moonless, and a mass of grey cloud hung over the city like a dirty blanket. Earlier in the evening it had rained: now the tyres of passing cars hissed as they splashed through the puddles, and the pavements were the colour of dark sodden sponges. Jackson had picked a corner where two of the street lights were out. He'd already checked carefully for patrolling policemen and traffic wardens. There weren't any. The woman walking towards Jackson along the opposite pavement was well into her thirties-not young enough to be foolish and too affluent to be streetwise. She wore a smartly cut black overcoat, her hair was coiffed back, doubtless from a fancy salon, and her heels went clack-clack-clack on the pavement.

There was a bag hooked over her right shoulder, one of those trendy leather bags with floppy handles. That's where her purse would be, Jackson decided. He waited against the railings until she was about fifteen feet away, then sauntered casually across the road and stood on the pavement, blocking her path. She stopped, and he was pleased to see she looked a little startled. "Hello," he said softly, and her eyes widened slightly. She had a delicate, pretty face, he thought. "I like your bag," he said now, pointing at it with one extended arm. "Thank you," she said crisply, which surprised him, since most of the women were too scared to speak. Funny how reactions differed. Maybe she was foreign. With his other hand he showed her the knife. It was a seven-inch blade, with a sweeping crescent curve that ended in a honed point. The Americans called them Bowie knives-Jackson liked the name. He said, "Give me the bag." The woman didn't panic. That was a relief; the last thing he wanted was for her to scream. She just nodded, then reached with her left arm and unhooked the bag from her shoulder.

She held the bag's handles with one hand, and he started to reach forward to take it, then realised she was rummaging in it with the other. "Just hand it over," he was saying as the woman withdrew her hand. It suddenly shot out straight towards him, and something glinted in the dark. He felt an agonising pain in his left arm, right below his shoulder. "Jesus!" he shouted, wincing. What had she just done to him? He looked and saw blood spurting from his arm. The pain was excruciating. I'm going to cut you bitch, he thought, full of rage. He began to move forward, but the metal implement she held glinted again and jabbed him sharply in the middle of his chest. Once, then twice, each time causing him to flinch. He was in agony, and when Jackson saw the woman's hand move again, he turned and ran as fast as he could. He reached the corner, clutching his wounded arm, and thought who the hell was that? Whoever she was, Jackson decided, as blood continued to ooze through his fingers, he'd picked the wrong lady.

Looking around her carefully, she saw that there was no one else in the square. Good. Calmly, she took a tissue out and wiped the end of the Stanley knife, sticky from her assailant's blood, then retracted the blade. Normally she would never have resisted a street robbery, but there had been no way she was going to give the man her bag. A light went on outside one of the houses and a curtain was drawn back, so she moved away quickly, still holding the Stanley knife, in case the man was waiting for her, ready to have another go. But leaving the square, she saw no one on the pavement ahead of her. A taxi passed by; it held a couple, necking in the back. At the corner she turned into a small side street which ended in a cul-de-sac. She stopped at the entrance to a large mansion block, let herself in, then climbed to the second floor. Here she unlocked a door and entered a flat, turning on a light in the small sitting room. The place was sparsely furnished by the landlord, gloomy in its bareness. But it didn't matter to her.

She wasn't staying long-she only rented for a month at a time, and this was her third place. She knew that once her orders came she would be living far more comfortably. She went to the bedroom where two computer bags sat in the corner, and carried them both to the pine desk in the sitting room. One bag held a small black machine that resembled a sleek sort of CD player; the other was a laptop computer. Connecting the two with a USB cable, she pressed a button on the black machine, and watched as it transferred to the laptop data that it had recorded in her absence. On the computer she then ran a software routine that filled the screen with numbers. Sitting down in front of the desk, she reached into her own bag, the one the man had tried to take from her, and took out a large, hardcover book. It was a novel, well-thumbed-An Instance of the Fingerpost. She wondered idly if she would ever read it. She opened the book, flicked through it and finding the page she wanted carefully put it down next to the computer and drew up a chair. Twenty minutes later she was finished.

On a scratch pad she had a list of numbers, each with an accompanying word she had written down. She stood up now, and took the single page of Russian text to the lavatory, where she ripped it into small pieces before flushing it away. She put the black machine and the laptop into their respective carrying bags, then returned them to the bedroom. Finally, she came back to the desk. She decided to allow herself a cigarette, and fished in her bag for a pack of Marlboros. What she really craved was a Sobranie. Presumably one of the fancy tobacconists in London, like Davidoff's, would sell them. But Marlboros would have to do, she thought, as she lit her cigarette. Always remember, they had drilled her again and again, it's the little things you think don't matter that can give you away. She had memorised the message on the single page of text and now she ran over it in her mind, focusing on the key instruction. You should begin now.

2 I suppose it all went as well as could be expected." Charles Wetherby was standing by the window of his office, looking down at the Thames, where the little waves bristled, sawtoothed in the late November wind. A tourist cruising boat moved jerkily in the chop, its decks empty, the few passengers sitting snugly in the cabin below. "Thank goodness it was no worse," said Liz Carlyle from her chair in front of Wetherby's desk. She had given evidence to the inquiry for over three hours; Wetherby had been there a day and a half. Now he looked tired, strained, and unusually for him, made no effort to disguise it. Sighing, he rubbed a palm against his cheekbone thoughtfully, then turned and faced Liz."DG says you did very well. Not that you ever had anything to worry about." She nodded, wishing she shared his confidence. The fallout from that last operation had not yet subsided. The discovery of a mole in MI5, who had been intent on undermining the Service, was likely to reverberate for years to come.

As the Home Secretary had taken to saying, with the monotony of a mantra, "If the Security Service isn't fit for purpose, how the hell can we win the war on terrorism?" The same Home Secretary had insisted on an inquiry into the whole sorry business. Fortunately he'd eventually grasped that a public inquiry would be a disaster, so it had been held in closed session, chaired by a former Cabinet secretary, assisted by a judge and a trusted businessman. No prying press, no trial by headline; no MPs posturing in some parliamentary committee room for the benefit of the cameras. The report when it came had been a model of Whitehall-ese, beautifully expressed, utterly undramatic, no blame, reasonably fair. "What will happen now?" asked Liz. Wetherby moved back to his desk, sitting down and picking up a pencil. He tapped distractedly on a pile of papers. "There'll be a review of recruitment, enhanced vetting procedures ... other things. But as I say, you've got nothing to worry about." "Have you, Charles?" she asked.

It had been Wetherby himself who had predicted heads would roll after the near-debacle and the Thames House rumour mill had suggested Wetherby's would be one. He shrugged, leaning back in his chair. He was not as engaged as usual, which alarmed Liz. What else could he be thinking about? Finally he said, "I'd like to think it will be all right for me as well. But who knows? I've learnt these things are hard to predict. Anyway, I won't be here for the aftermath. I'm taking some leave." "Oh," she said. He heard the question in her voice. She was wondering whether this was voluntary. "It's my choice, Liz." Wetherby looked at her. "I'm entitled to a sabbatical and I've decided I should spend some time at home." He gestured with a quick motion of his head at a framed photograph of his wife and sons. Liz nodded. This was why he seemed so subdued. Joanne Wetherby had been seriously ill for as long as Liz had known Charles-over five years. It could not have been easy, juggling his job with his role as the husband of an invalid and the father of two boys.

She was sure he would miss the challenge, the excitement, and the colleagues. And her, Liz wondered, would he miss her? Liz asked, "How long will you be away?" Wetherby shrugged, and flicked a non-existent piece of fluff off his suit jacket. "I'm not sure. Perhaps three months, something like that. We'll have to see how things go. While I'm away, Michael Binding will run the branch." Oh God, thought Liz, not that condescending oaf. They'd crossed swords more than once. She tried her best to mask her reaction, but Wetherby gave her an ironic smile. "Don't worry. He won't be telling you what to do." "Won't he?" "No. You're being posted. DG and I have discussed it, and we want you to move to Counter-Espionage." "What?" she asked bluntly, unable to contain her surprise. Nor her dismay. During the Cold War, Counter-Espionage had been the plum assignment, the primus inter pares of the Service's various branches. But in a post-9/11 world, its light was dimmer, overshadowed by Counter-Terrorism.

Counter-Espionage was something of a backwater now. "You need a change. You know that." "I don't need a demotion, Charles. That's what it is. I feel as though I'm being pushed out." She paused, realising that her hurt was showing, and bit her lip. Charles looked at her gravely. "That's not it at all," he said. "We just want to broaden your experience. People think espionage is no longer a problem. Well, they're wrong. There are more foreign intelligence officers in London now than before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Russians are back in force, the Chinese are more active than ever. So are some of the Middle Eastern countries. And the game's changed, you know. It used to be all about political and military intelligence-all about winning the Cold War and the fighting war that never happened. Deadly enough, but strictly for professionals. Now there's money, big money in it. We wouldn't be posting you there if there wasn't a job for you to do." "Who will I report to?" she asked. "To Brian Ackers," said Charles. "You'll be in the Russian Section and he's the assistant director.

He's also acting director of the whole Counter-Espionage Branch for the time being." Liz raised her eyebrows. Brian Ackers was a Cold War veteran who hadn't moved on. Prickly, touchy, a man who resented the displacement of counter-espionage as the Service's highest priority. "I know he's not the easiest man to work for," Wetherby continued, "but he's got enormous experience. You could learn a lot from him. After all, that's where the whole intelligence game started and where many of the real skills still are." Liz nodded, "Yes Charles," she said, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. "Brian won't be there forever, Liz," said Charles encouragingly. "He'll retire in two years." He looked at her meaningfully. "There may be opportunities after that." She tried to take this in. Was he suggesting she might replace Brian Ackers one day? Become an assistant director? She was flattered, but she still found the prospect of a move to Counter-Espionage uninspiring. "When do I start?" she asked. "Next week.

Peggy Kinsolving is going with you." So, thought Liz, they're moving everyone closely involved with the mole investigation. But this was good news. Peggy had been seconded by MI6 in the previous year, then opted to stay on in MI5. She was a desk officer, with boundless energy and an almost unique ability to ferret out facts. If Wetherby and DG were offering her to Liz, she was more than happy to accept the gift. "Anyway, I'm off next week, so I'll say goodbye now. Good luck in the new post," said Wetherby, and Liz took her cue and stood up. He held out his hand and grasped hers. Suddenly he said, in an awkward, tentative voice, "Do me one favour, please." "Of course," she said, suddenly near tears. "Stay in touch." He said this shyly, then quickly looked down at the papers on his desk. And turning to go, Liz saw through the window the tour boat returning from its quick jaunt up river, moving more smoothly, traveling with the receding tide. Dusk was turning to dark.

As the windows lit up in the offices and flats on the far bank, the river became quite quickly a gleaming black flood, flecked with gold. Excerpted from Illegal Action by Stella Rimington Copyright © 2008 by Stella Rimington. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5: Amazon.co.uk: Stella Rimington: 9780099436720: Books Product Description Amazon Review You have to admire the cheek of Open Secret's author Stella Rimington. After a career spanning 25 years in MI5, during which she was more than happy for the Official Secrets Acts to be used to the government's advantage, she is now outraged that attempts should have been made to block publication of her memoirs and is calling for the act to be reformed.

In an extended preface to Open Secret, Rimington writes of her encounter with Cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson, "By the end of an hour or so of being threatened, bullied and cajoled in the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger way the Establishment behaves to its recalcitrant sons and, as I now know, daughters, I was very shaken". One wonders what else she expected? The thought of any former director-general of MI5 writing his or her memoirs was bound to have disturbed the security services and, compared to many, Rimington got off lightly. But then, whatever else she might think, Rimington is still very much an Establishment woman. She submitted her manuscript for vetting, took out one or two edgy bits, and as she disarmingly points out, there are no revelations about the inner workings of the intelligence services. When she gets to any contentious issues, such as MI5's role in infiltrating CND and breaking the miners' strike, all she has to say is that MI5 never did anything wrong, that that those who say otherwise are conspiracy theorists and that we'll just have to take her word for it because she's right.

The portrait that emerges of a bunch of mildly incompetent bureaucrats who wouldn't say boo to a goose does no favours to Rimington or MI5. The books does have its moments, particularly those describing a woman isolated in an almost exclusively male world, but its real significance lies in the fact it was published at all. If the director-general is allowed to go public, there's precious little to stop the MI5 foot soldiers doing likewise. And when they do, the skeletons that Rimington has kept firmly locked in the cupboard might start to come tumbling out. --John Crace --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review "Was she right to publish? Most certainly.

If we are to have a mature attitude to our intelligence services, we need this kind of inside account - it is vital in stripping away mystique and building understanding" (Daily Telegraph) "Stella Rimington deserves our thanks for resisting the bullying of the cabinet office and many of her colleagues and associates in Whitehall, and pushing on to publication" (New Statesman) "She writes in a refreshingly self-deprecating style of juggling the roles of single parent and chief "spook"" (Independent on Sunday) The perfect spy: Stella Rimington - Telegraph Ways With Words The perfect spy: Stella Rimington The first woman to head up MI5 – and its first chief to be publicly named – Stella Rimington is now a bestselling novelist and chair of the Man Booker prize. There's no doubt she has had a gilded career, but at what cost to herself and her family? Stella Rimington photographed at the Savile Club, London. Photo: EVA VERMANDEL Stella Rimington with her husband, John, in 1983. Stella Rimington with her daughters in 1978.

By Sabine Durrant 7:00AM BST 10 Jul 2011 I had arranged to meet Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, in a London gentleman's club – the sort of place where the chairs are leather, the walls panelled and the newspapers on sticks. She is photographed in one of the main rooms, as befits her status as the grand Dame of the security service, but from 10am non-members, viz women, are allowed only in a distant 'library'. Experience of an intelligence-gathering nature proves an essential asset in locating this, and once Rimington, with me in tow, has caromed through peg-lined cloakrooms, slotted into cranking lifts and orienteered along complicated corridors, the displacement begins to seem a suitable metaphor for her professional life: central to the Establishment and yet, by necessity, kept tucked away in a distant room on the third floor. Rimington is Britain's most famous spy, the first woman to rise to the top of MI5 and the first director general to be publicly named: a double whammy.

Her career, which spanned 25 important years and covered all three branches of the service (counter-espionage, counter-subversion and counter-terrorism) involved her, Zelig-like, in many of the key events and social changes of the second half of the 20th century. She was behind the scenes during the Cold War, the miners' strike, CND, the activities of the IRA. But within the service itself she was also representative of a huge shift, from a time in 1968, the year of her recruitment, when women were excluded from operational or intelligence work, to 1992, when 'a housewife superspy', as the tabloids called her, could run the whole shebang – and be photographed on her way to do it. Her 'outing' was brilliant for PR purposes – look how enlightened we are! – but has caused uneasiness ever since. The demands of transparency don't sit well with those of espionage, or personal safety.

When Rimington retired she wrote an autobiography, Open Secret, which, despite revealing very little, caused an awful stink, and since then a series of spy novels – the latest published this July – the publicising of which demand the kind of self-promotion one can't imagine comes naturally to a spook. As she writes in Open Secret, the best agents have an important skill: 'the ability to merge into the background, to be unmemorable'. Related Articles Home Office hits back at 'police state' warning 17 Feb 2009 Some of us may want all the gossip we can get, but for others, like Bernard Ingham, 'the most effective Secret Service is the one which is secret. She should shut up.' She doesn't though. She talks a lot. While we tried to find our room we chatted about Brussels; she had lived around the corner from my grandparents in the 1970s (I wondered, hopefully, whether the passing cleaner might think we were talking in code 'Wezembeek … Walloon…'). But in the library she ignored the comfy leather sofa and sat on a hard, upright chair, her hands in her lap, as if being interrogated.

She is 76 but looks extraordinarily youthful; her hair is expensively bobbed, her teeth even and her face, with its penetrating blue eyes, lightly made up. She says 'quite frankly' and 'clearly' a lot, and 'these are real issues', which gives the impression of total disclosure, and sometimes her answers are so long you forget what you asked in the first place (which I suspect is intentional). To any question directed at MI5 she is practised in the use of abstract generalities. Describing how it has moved on since her departure, she says, 'There are huge changes in the technology, but the gathering of intelligence from technical means and human sources and then the analysis and the decision of what action to take is the progression that will still take place.' And on a finding of the report into the 7/7 bombings that MI5 was let down by its paperwork: 'I have always said and thought' – separating speech from thought is another habit – 'that the great strength of an intelligence organisation was their record keeping and their ability to know what they know.' Maybe things have slipped since you left? She laughs.

'Any complex organisation ultimately comes down to the activities of individuals within it.' On her life outside the service, she is altogether less guarded. 'Oh, shut up,' she tells her mobile phone when it rings for the second time, and almost makes me drop my notebook when she suddenly describes two MI6 characters in her latest novel as 'slightly s—ish'. It is serendipity, she claims, that got her into MI5. 'Looking back, my life has been completely by chance.' Born in 1935, she was a war child, buffeted around the country, from South Norwood to Essex to Barrow-in-Furness to Nottingham. She studied English at Edinburgh university and worked as an archivist before marrying John Rimington, whom she had met while at school. He was posted to India in 1965, to work for the British High Commission, and it was while she was spinning out her days as a diplomatic wife that her shoulder was tapped and she was employed as a clerical assistant for a security liaison officer.

She hoped to get pregnant, and if she had done so earlier (she was to go on to have two daughters), she says she would probably have called a halt to her career, 'or ended up a county archivist somewhere'. As it was, returning to England in 1969, in an 'unsettled' mood, she approached an MI5 recruiter, was interviewed for the role of junior assistant officer, and got it. The heroine of her spy series, Liz Carlyle, 'clearly isn't me, but has elements of me when I was her age. I certainly allow her to think and say things that I said.' She corrects herself. 'Probably didn't say, but thought. I have learnt that you get on better by not being over forceful and pushy. You have to get your way by more subtle means. Quite frankly, though, in today's world women are accepted as part of the human race now in a way when I started they certainly weren't.' When, in the 1970s, the service began running out of colonial military-types, she and other 'well-educated' female contemporaries watched the promotion of men younger and less experienced than themselves.

'It was the beginning of women's lib and sex-discrimination legislation and all that.' Was there a strong feminist movement within the service? 'Absolutely, yes, there was. We were quite a feisty bunch.' She has no regrets about any of her activities during her service, though she was associated with some of the more controversial aspects, such as investigating the miners. 'No, people didn't like that. But what we did was entirely appropriate. I am not one for regrets, quite frankly. I think you do stuff and some of it goes right and some of it goes wrong and you move on. Life doesn't go exactly as you plan when you are young, but you go with it.' The hardest thing, she says, was keeping quiet to friends and family about what she did. Her husband, her parents and her brother knew, but 'not in any great detail. I think it does have a huge influence on one's life. Even now, anybody in the service who isn't the director general lives as a sort of undercover [sic]. It is particularly difficult for young people because it's the thing people talk about – their job, their work.' What did she say if people asked her? 'Various things, depending on the circumstances.

You are given advice … But it is a feature of working for a secret organisation. It is never easy. You create a carapace.' Rimington's marriage broke down under this and other strains in 1984, leaving her as a single mother (though she never actually got a divorce and she and John are still amicable). 'But you do lose friends,' she adds. 'There is no doubt about it.' In her autobiography she writes particularly fondly about a girl at school, and when I ask if she still sees her the answer is insightful. 'We did lose touch. During the middle period when I wasn't able to say what I did. And when I became … a public figure she was quite upset. She is quite Left-wing and she thought I had been intruding into everybody's private life, but we managed to get back on friendly terms again.' She brightens. 'And in fact I went to stay with her last weekend.' Was it a relief when her name was released? She makes a 'not sure' grimace. 'It made life easier in some ways. But it was a difficulty for the children.

We were exposed to a great deal of media attention; they found out very quickly where we lived and it was at a time when the IRA were very active in London.' Her elder daughter was at university then – 'outside the zone of protection, which was worse' – but she and her younger child, and their dog, Stanley, spent time in a safe house before moving. It was the only time in her career that she felt personally in danger. 'I did for a moment think, "Hang on, should I be doing this?"' In the end she didn't retire from the service until 1996, shortly after being made a dame. She has hardly stopped since – boards of this and that (including Marks & Spencer), though she is learning, she says, to slow down a bit. She keeps 'a sharp eye' on world events, occasionally spouting her views – anti ID cards, for example – in print. She is a director of the International Spy Museum in Washington and on the board of Refuge, the charity for victims of domestic violence. This year she is chairing the Man Booker prize.

'When I was asked, I thought, "God, this is going to be like herding cats," because I had heard stories of such huge arguments between the judges, but so far it's very jolly.' Her aim is 'to produce a book people will actually read'. She divides her time between a cottage in north London ('I'm not telling you any more than that') and a house in Norfolk. Is she good at village life? 'Yes, I am, actually. I am patron of the friends of the church and work in a bookshop once a week to raise money for it.' She loves gardening and sitting in a deckchair, listening to the swifts. Is there a man in her life? 'None that I wish to talk about.' She would quite like another dog. 'I feel silly going for walks without one.' Her daughters don't like her talking about them much, but she has five 'smashing' grandchildren, and clearly dotes upon them all. This summer she is taking the eldest, 12-year-old Charlotte, to New York and Washington where she is giving a lecture on the changing face of national security. 'I take my job as a granny very seriously as you can imagine.' She raises an eyebrow.

'I take everything very seriously.' Former head of MI5 calls for people to spy on neighbours following murder of soldier Lee Rigby | Daily Mail Online comments Former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington has called for British people to inform security services if they suspect their neighbours maybe extremists The former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington has called for British people to inform security services if they suspect their neighbours maybe extremists. Dame Stella, who supports the Government’s controversial ‘snoopers’ charter’, said people need to be more alert because it is impossible for security services to spot every threat. She called for a wartime vigilance and for people to be the Government’s ‘eyes and ears’ following the killing of Lee Rigby. The 78-year-old, who was MI5’s first female Director General, said: ‘The community has the responsibility to act as the eyes and ears, as they did during the war … where there were all these posters up saying the walls have ears and the enemy is everywhere.

‘There have often been indications in the community, whether it’s Muslim or anywhere else, that people are becoming extremists and spouting hate phrases.’ Dame Stella said security services had to prioritise the most dangerous threats because ‘thousands’ of people were being radicalised in Britain. She said further terror attacks on the UK were inevitable unless the country became a ‘police state’. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Her comments, made at the Hay Festival, were prompted following the killing of 25-year-old soldier Lee Rigby by alleged Islamist fanatics Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, in Woolwich last Wednesday. Radicalised: Michael Adebolajo brandishing bloodied knives after the murder of Lee Rigby last week Arrested: In 2010 Michael Adebolajo, second from right, was among nine suspected members of the Al-Shabaab movement captured by Kenyan police Dame Stella said the Woolwich killing was classified as a ‘terrorist attack’ because of the ideology behind the attack. It has now emerged that Adebolajo made a second attempt to travel to Somalia to join extremist groups after failing in 2010.

The killing has raised questions about MI5 after it also emerged the two suspects were known to them. Adebolajo was detained in Kenya in 2010 after trying to join a terrorist group. An investigation by parliamentary intelligence is being carried out to determine whether there were intelligence failings. BBC News | UK | First lady of espionage Saturday, 8 September, 2001, 11:09 GMT 12:09 UK First lady of espionage Dame Stella Rimington: No stranger to controversy Dame Stella Rimington, whose book on her time as head of MI5 is about to be published, is used to being first in her professional career. The first female head of the secret service, she was also the first to be officially named and photographed during her tenure in charge of Britain's spy service. Dame Stella, 65, was director-general of the internal security service from 1992 to 1996. She was dubbed the "housewife spy" by some in the tabloid press after MI5's decision to name but not supply a picture of its new director-general.

I'd always warned my daughter not to open the front door until she had checked who it was, but she forgot and called me down Dame Stella Rimmington An out-of-focus long-lens photograph featuring an overcoat-wearing Dame Stella, carrying shopping bags, was reprinted by the newspapers. She said of this: "That terrible snap, I'd always warned my daughter not to open the front door until she had checked who it was, but she forgot and called me down. "There was a flash - which was actually quite worrying in my position, because you're never sure whether someone is trying to take your picture or shoot you." Describing her time in office ahead of her book launch, she said in a statement: "I was fortunate to be in a central position during a time of great change in the security scene and I believe I have a contribution to make to our understanding of the period." She describes her account as a "personal" memoir. Establishment opposition Her decision to publish caused concern in parliament, coming at the same time as the return of ex-agent David Shayler to face trial on charges of breaking the Official Secrets Act.

She is said to have been opposed by her successor at MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, and by the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. The former Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Charles Guthrie, has also strongly criticised her attempt to publish. But after she reportedly threatened to invoke her right to freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act, ministers and officials are said to have concluded they could not block publication. Dame Stella used some of her many years of high-level national security experience to good use when she left MI5 by becoming a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer. Eavesdropping on customers In a novel use of her surveillance skills, she walked around shop floors in an attempt to listen to what customers had to say about products and services before reporting back to her new bosses. "She is interested in hearing what customers are saying and her eavesdropping is a first-hand way of getting some feedback," an M&S spokesman explained at the time. In her post-MI5 life, Dame Stella also accepted non-executive directorships at British Gas and at a head-hunting company.

The most recent James Bond films have seen the fictitious supercool spy's boss portrayed by a female "M", with Dame Judi Dench filling that role. Dame Stella said she found her portrayal as "startling", and added that it was "really very good. Both my daughters said so. One even noted that she holds her hands the way I do." See also: Why was a female selected for M's character in James Bond? - Movies & TV Stack Exchange Why was a female selected for M's character in James Bond? up vote 5 down vote favorite Detailed review of M's character in Wikipedia showed that Ian had different real life people in mind while portraying M. Wikipedia states: Fleming based much of M's character on Rear Admiral John Godfrey, who was Fleming's superior at the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II. After Fleming's death, Godfrey complained "He turned me into that unsavoury character, M. Despite that different people are named, each one of them being a male. In the films also every characters for M was filmed as male before Judi Dench came into the scene. So what might be the reason producers suddenly changed their view for M as male and introduced a female as M?

EDIT : After @jampez77 comment I also found this wikipedia link on Judi Dench , where it is told that the producers brought in Dame Judi Dench to take over as the new M. The character is based on Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996. So my question is now why did the producers took the risk to change the gender of such an important character in the movie? As it is seen viewers do not like it when anything vital is changed in the movie of any famous novel. up vote 13 down vote In the older James Bond movies, the women were basically just there as eye candy and wouldn't have been taken seriously as head of an organization like the Secret Service. It has become true to life now, especially as Stella Rimington became the Director-General of the real life MI5 from 1992-1996. Also In Fleming's earlier James Bond novels M was always a man. At that time there weren't really many women who had achieved high office ranks, but now women serve as Presidents in some countries and Prime Ministers in some countries too. So women can now portray M who is the head of MI6.

up vote 11 down vote accepted @jampez77 s answer is fine. Just adding some more references to make the answer more compact. It is evident from all the wikipedia links or other sites that Ian Fleming himself portrayed M as a male officer, since in his time (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964), these type of jobs were typically handled by male. In the Film series of James Bond , M was characterized by different great actors as male. But things changed with the emergence of Dame Stella Rimington . DCB (born 13 May 1935) is a British author, who was the Director General of MI5 from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment. In 1993, Stella Rimington became the first DG of MI5 to pose openly for cameras at the launch of a brochure outlining the organisation's activities. When Judi came into the scene, Robert Brown was playing as M.

But after a long period , After the long period between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye, the producers brought in Dame Judi Dench to take over as the new M. This IMDB trivia shows , she was selected as M as the first female character because of the emergence of Stella Rimimgton's being the first major DG of MI5. Producers thought it would be nice to change the gender of M from male to female to keep in pace with the contemporary thinking. Lois Maxwell, who played the character Moneypenny in Bond movies from 1962-1985, had made the suggestion of having M as a woman in 1985. Judi Dench is famous for acting as M, but Louis is also famous(other than her being Moneypenny) for making the suggestion to the producers. Link1 and Link 2 suggest the fact. She was the one who first thought of M being a female. This is the way M was changed to female by introducing Judi Dench . 2 Is there any question that Dench's version of M falls short? No. In fact, her strength of character is all the more compelling than any previous actor.

– wallyk May 2 '13 at 16:37 up vote 4 down vote So I don't think the other answers, although good, actually address why a female M (they're more about why Judi Dench to which the answer is Stella Rimmington). To answer why a female M, we need to look at both the history of Bond pre-Judi Dench, and also the film GoldenEye itself. Prior to GoldenEye the previous two Bonds had been a mixed success. Roger Moore had been popular in the role but his advancing age (58 in a View to A Kill) and an overkill of gadgets (Moonraker is basically Bond in Star Wars), had led the makers to move to a more Fleming-esque line of films: more plot, less gadgets, more stunts. This had mixed results (For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy are seen by many as minor Bond films), and Moore's swansong (A View to A Kill) returned to earlier themes (look at Zorin's fold out map dastardly plot reveal on the airship and his plan to become dominant in his field by nuking the competition ala Goldfinger).

Post AVTAK, we had Timothy Dalton, and again a more Flemingesque, plot driven, pair of films, again with mixed success (did ok at the box office, but again regarded by many, but not all, as minor Bond films). There was then a big hiatus due to legal action (the Danjaq stuff about Thunderball rights) which meant it was nearly 10 years until a new Bond and film appeared (GoldenEye). At this point to look at GoldenEye we see a number of points. The film was a change of direction (again), but this time there was an attempt to bridge the two worlds of Fleming fans and Gadget Fans.

This was done by bringing in a plot which was again similar to Goldfinger, but also made some decisions to span the worlds: A suave Bond in Pierce Brosnan, evoking Sean Connery; A conflicted Bond ala Timothy Dalton; Still a number of quips and side seductions ala Roger Moore; Retro elements such as the Aston Martin; There are also modernising elements, to account for the later decade in which the film is made: An updated storyline, taking into account the Soviet decline; The impregnable bank is electronic, not a physical place; The lead villain is an ex-ally turned traitor; The indestructible henchman is a sexy woman (Xenia Onatop!); The female lead (Natalia) is much stronger and survives much worse (the Severna attack, and return to Moscow) on her own without Bond's help; The film abandons John Barry for music, using French artist Eric Serra (although you can hear this is abandoned halfway through to return to stock Bond music, and this finally worked when David Arnold came in in Tomorrow Never Dies) Bond himself is seen as an anachronism, a blunt instrument and misogynist dinosaur; A stronger and less sappy Mone

ypenny (although she ends up as much in love with Bond).

In this realm of change it is easy to see that with so many strong female characters, it's obvious that a female M would be a part of it. That they had Judi Dench/Stella Remington was a bonus. As the Brosnan films went on, they ended up drawing back to the Moore days of gadgets, and when another hiatus due to studio financial issues caused them to start yet again, this time it was a full revamp of a young Bond, partly due to the only novel being left being the first, Casino Royale. In this context the Judi Dench M was subtly changed to be a comforting carry over, AND a surrogate mother to the younger, less experienced Bond.

Question: Who was the first female head of MI5?
Answer: STELLA RIMMINGTON